| Merrit Garland’s justice department mimics Stalin-era politics. |
Let’s stipulate first that I’m not a lawyer, although I do play one on Facebook so that’s worth something.
Before we start, let’s engage in a couple rounds of Whataboutism, just to get the blood flowing. (It’s only 5am here, and I need at least two cups of Whataboutism to get my eyes open, usually.)
No one remembers her, but once there was a woman named Hillary Clinton who deleted 31,000 emails, each of which was under subpoena. Each deletion was a separate felony, so that’s 31,000 felonies. If she’d been prosecuted and convicted and gotten the maximum sentence, the sun would have burned out before she’d have been released from prison. (Hillary and her team are also the ones who made up the whole hoax about Russian Collusion and fed it to a salivating FBI, but it’s not clear that was technically illegal. Apparently anyone can make up Russian Collusion hoaxes, and not be in violation of a law.)
Back to the emails… FBI Director Comey acknowledged her crimes but stated, with no explanation, that there was no prosecutor in America who would bring charges. Everyone knew what he meant. Any prosecutor going after the Clintons would be found dead from suicide in 24 hours. So his decision was understandable.
What’s not understandable is why no one ever wondered what was IN the emails. If someone’s going to risk 31,000 counts of destroying subpoenaed evidence, there must have been something far worse that would have been revealed if those emails had not been destroyed. That’s a much more important question than merely the obvious crime of actively deleting them. I guess we’ll never know because—despite Trump’s polite request during that televised debated—Russia and the others who hacked her server haven’t released them yet. Maybe they’re waiting for the right time.
Anyway, second cup of Whataboutism: The jig’s nearly up with the Biden crime family. Someone correct me if I’ve got the facts wrong, but looks like we now have:
- Bank records of millions of dollars flowing to the Biden family, including Joe, and these are formal documents that were subpoenaed from the banks themselves. (Not only does this prove the payment of money from Ukraine and other places, but the complex shell game that was used to try to mask where the money comes from looks like conspiracy + obstruction of justice.)
- At least one whistleblower in the FBI who’s pointed to a document that (in a smoking gun way) confirms these payments were coming from Ukraine, to the Bidens, so as to pay them to use American power to get a prosecutor fired who was investigating the corrupt company paying zillions to the Bidens.
- We have Biden on video (wow) BRAGGING about having given the Ukrainian government an ultimatum: fire that prosecutor in the next few hours or you’re not getting the $1 billion in American taxpayer money that was promised. “Sure enough,” Joe gleefully tells his audience, “they fired him!” [insert stupid grin]
- During the 2020 campaign, we had President Donald Trump—who’d become aware of what was looking like a prima-facie case of corruption—ask the president of Ukraine about it. (Important detail: the U.S. and Ukraine had a treaty under which each was obligated to help the other with respect to investigating crimes.) In return for these early probes by Trump into the Biden Crime Family, what happened to Trump? He was impeached by Congress. Obviously, Trump had not gotten the memo that you NEVER try to probe the Biden Crime Family. Talk about an impeachable offense!
- That damning document the whistleblower told us about, what happened to it? It’s also under subpoena by Congress, but the FBI won’t give it up. Yeah, they discreetly let a few Congresspeople see it, and those who saw it say it’s damning as hell. But the FBI won’t release it, even though they admit it’s not classified.)
[Long deep breath] OK, that’s enough whataboutism to get the blood flowing. Now let’s turn to the latest in a very, very long string of attempts by the government to take down Trump “Beria-style,” via the Justice Department. (Lavrentiy Beria, Stalin’s secret police chief, famously said: “Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime.” Meaning: “Whoever you need taken down, let me know and we’ll find something to get him on.”) We know about the Russian Collusion hoax. We know about the two impeachment attempts—the first for improperly asking questions about the Biden Crime Family, and the second for having organized a peaceful protest in Washington and explicitly asking the protestors to stay peaceful. (They did, but some hired goons who later arrived in buses, carrying crowbars and MAGA hats–and who had nothing to do with Trump–trashed the capital. So all the peaceful protestors went to jail, many are still there, and Trump got impeached.)
Let’s see, moving on from the RC hoax, and the two impeachments, we have some made-up crime about misclassifying a payment to a porn star ages ago in New York which—given the details of the case—apparently wasn’t even illegal but a novel theory (aided by hallucigens) suggests there might have been some violation of something, somewhere. Everyone seems to agree that case is going nowhere.
FINALLY we come to this latest attempt to use the Justice Dept. to stop Trump. Here’s me paraphrasing esteemed former Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz–a Democrat who’s never voted for Trump, if that matters.
“[Mostly these charges are not significant.] The only exception to that was two paragraphs and we’re going to have to hear an exception from Trump’s lawyers or from Trump as to how we can justify having shown to somebody who doesn’t have security clearance allegedly some information about a plan to attack Iran. He may claim he didn’t show it to them, just kind of waved it in front of them as part of bragging but that’s something that will have to be explained,” he added.
“The material about simply possessing classified material is not a damning argument.
[JV note: I think it’s not damning because pretty much every president (and some VP’s like Joe Biden) routinely walk away from the White House with classified information. The Presidential Records Act gives presidents full authority to declassify anything they want, and some interpretations hold that merely moving a document from the West Wing into the residential section of the White House—that one action—automatically declassifies it.]
“There are two damning paragraphs, just two: paragraph 34 and paragraph 35 where they have tape recordings of the former president basically acknowledging that some of the papers that he possessed and showed to a writer [were never declassified, even though he had the power to declassify them.] When you have a tape in the voice of the defendant himself it’s hard to dispute, so I think this is a serious indictment on these two charges.
“We’re going to have to hear an exception from Trump’s lawyers or from Trump as to how we can justify having shown to somebody who doesn’t have security clearance allegedly some information about a plan to attack Iran. He may claim he didn’t show it to them, just kind of waved it in front of them as part of bragging but that’s something that will have to be explained.”
So let’s see if I understand this. As president, you can declassify anything you want, for any reason, at anytime. But if you don’t declassify it, and then you store it somewhere improperly, and—perhaps worse—show it to someone or at least wave it in their face, you’ve committed a serious crime.
So Trump had the power to declassify all of it, but if he didn’t, then there’s a crime. But what’s the crime, exactly? The crime would seem to be that he never said the magic words: “I hereby declassify this stuff.” He could have said the words. But didn’t. So his failure to say those five words is what could send him to prison for decades.
Let’s see, what were the magic words Hillary had to say, to make it legal for her to delete 31,000 emails under subpoena? Oh, there weren’t any such words? They just gave her a pass anyway?
What were the magic words Biden needed to say, to make it legal for him to take millions in bribe money as payment for using American taxpayer dollars to extort the firing of a prosecutor in Ukraine? Oh, there weren’t any such words?
What’s important to keep in mind here is the backdrop against which this is occurring. First, no former American president has ever before been indicted for a crime—ever. Second, the first time it’s happened, that former American president is running for office again, against the sitting president, and is light-years ahead of him in the polls.
I heard one commentator on TV make this observation: “Whatever else is true, I think America can get off its high horse now and quit pretending it’s some kind of lofty, exceptional country that has the moral right to lecture others. With this indictment—using the justice system to try to take down the candidate otherwise likely to succeed the sitting president—we’ve become nothing more than a banana republic.”
Now before anyone says: “Well, no one’s above the law,” that is provably untrue. Lots of people are above the law. Any politician with the last name Clinton or Biden seems to be above the law. All the BLM protestors were above the law. The illegal immigrants pouring across our southern border are above the law. And thanks to Soros-sponsored prosecutors, most of the criminals in places like San Francisco and New York are above the law.
Remember, Banana Republics ALWAYS have their protected classes. And equally: those they persecute.
Beria must be looking up from the grave and thinking: “Merrick Garland. Now there’s my kind of attorney general!”
Jacques Voorhees 